15 December, 2015

Review – Rise of the Tomb Raider

By
Kyle Shimmin

You wouldn’t believe how many times Lara forgot to jump over
spike pits, drowned in depths of submerged caves, and had murderous run-ins
with woodland predators who exhibited an unhealthy fascination with her throat,
over the course of this review process. No, I totally was not the one at fault
here; my gameplay was flawless throughout, but feel free to donate whatever
ancient Byzantine coins you can spare to her recovery fund…

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft’s back with more voluminous hair and practical
clothing than ever before! What’s more she’s not impelled by fear, or being
battered by unwashed feral men and the unforgiving elements alike; no, Lara’s
grown up, she’s driven by her thirst for knowledge, and there’s no situation
she can’t take in her stride.

In Crystal Dynamic’s 2013 game simply titled, Tomb Raider,
Lara found herself shipwrecked on an island that was hostile in every
conceivable way, and a few inconceivable ones too. Over the last two years I
unwittingly came into possession of at least four, quite possibly five copies
of the game for various platforms, but it wasn’t until just a couple of weeks
ago that I actually played it to completion. Had that game released this year,
it would have stood a good chance of being my personal game of the year; while
I can understand the misgivings some have towards how game treated Lara, I found
the whole experience refreshing; violent and uncomfortable, but refreshing.
With that, all my previous disinterest in Rise of the Tomb Raider vanished like
parchment held to an open flame, I simply had to play and review this title
before any such game of the year conversations could take place.

Rise of the Tomb Raider exposed, almost immediately a flaw
in the 2013 Tomb Raider experience, a flaw I hadn’t noticed, because it had
been years since I had lasted played a Tomb Raider title. In fact it’s quite
possible that the last time I had ran Lara off a cliff was on the PlayStation
2. 2013 Tomb Raider lacked the wide-eyed sense of exploration, of historical
wonder and path-finding that defined Tomb Raider, and indeed other PlayStation
2 era action-platforming titles that informed so much of my childhood. Those
games were not wide or open rather they were unswervingly linear, just as much
of 2013 Tomb Raider is and parts of Rise of The Tomb Raider are, but in those
titles Lara was venturing; encountering and overcoming new environments and
ancient traps. 2013 Tomb Raider possessed elements of that, but behind every
interaction, every footstep was the threat of the island dwellers – historical
discoveries were only ever window dressing, Lara’s survival was the challenge.
Rise of the Tomb Raider has a little of that early on, but within the first
hour I was solving water puzzles, which loosely translates to be pummelled by a
warm torrent of nostalgia for an experience I hadn’t consciously been aware of.

Without revealing too much of the plot, Lara’s on the hunt
for answers to a mystery that ruined her father’s reputation, and eventually,
his life. She’s not alone in her search, though those who pursue that same
mystery are certainly not her allies. They’re called Trinity, they are in
essence Dan Brown-inspired religious nutjobs, with a vast reserve of hapless
mercenaries, who coincidentally have a fetish for red emergency flares. The
Trinity forces are led by one particularly warped gentleman called Konstantin,
who considers himself to be ‘chosen’, his path preordained.

The story is fleshed out by scrolls, journals, narrated by the
people who penned them, and artefacts, described by Lara. Unlike many games,
Rise of the Tomb Raider’s ancillary texts are fascinating to me. They aren’t
written as if directed to the player, they feel authentic and tell several
different side stories, all in their own way related to the main plot; a
Trinity mercenary’s dawning comprehension, a Soviet commander’s isolated
dispatches, a Byzantine knight on the hunt. I found myself drawn to the
environment’s hidden pockets of history, in an attempt to gain greater insight
into how the mystery impacted so very many different people, fortunately there
is an abundance heralding from more than one of Earth’s eras.

The environments are as beautiful and perhaps more varied
than 2013 Tomb Raider’s, certainly boasting a level of detail and richness
beyond its predecessor, an impressive feat given its increased open-world
nature. Rise of the Tomb Raider’s world reminded me of Dragon Age Inquisition,
a game I spent days exploring, though this title’s areas are significantly
smaller, the explorative experiences far denser and more vertical. In its open
environments Rise of the Tomb Raider hides optional tombs, these are quite
unique in their architecture and constructed around a single different puzzle.
The puzzles are usually not too difficult or involved, but I found them
extremely rewarding. Each is the most distilled form of that exploration,
challenge, and solution loop that I highlighted earlier, and I believe the
relative simplicity is part of that loop’s success; frustration would only
detract from the awe of gazing at the richness of the spaces and tentatively
working through the necessary steps.

Rise of the Tomb Raider expands the gameplay options of its
predecessor, but functionally the tools are much the same. The levelling and
weapon upgrade systems have grown, but are otherwise unchanged. Primary
movement entails miles of interlinked ropes and a healthy helping of scalable
walls, Lara possesses a couple of new gadgets, but the fundamentals are as they
were. However, two factors elevate the gameplay above that of 2013 Tomb Raider.
Firstly, the open world is fully featured and meaningful here; open zones offer
side quests, house the aforementioned tombs in addition to other secrets, and
moving around them a lot of fun. I never felt rushed like in the previous game,
I just wanted to see everything, the open areas aren’t sprawling like other
games’, but they are filled with substantially rewards and locales worth
discovering. Secondly, the environmental puzzles and platforming, even outside
of the tombs, flow in more interesting and varied directions than before. These
elements are integrated naturally; Lara uses her skills and gadgets for more
than mere traversal in this game.

My issues are small, but they scar the otherwise virtually
flawless complexion of Rise of the Tomb Raider. On normal difficulty, dubbed
“Tomb Raider”, or the two levels above, aim-assist is disabled and cannot be
re-enabled from the options menu, as far as I can tell. This does indeed make
the game harder, the gunplay more jerky and unwieldy, which is a bad feel for a
console game; I’m not dying all that often on normal, at least not in
gunfights, but I am correcting my aim more than is enjoyable. This may have
also been true for 2013 Tomb Raider, but I played on the PC with a keyboard and
mouse, so had no trouble lining up headshots.

More significant is the bizarre way the game handles natives;
all natives whether Syrian or Siberian speak perfect, modern English with no accent.
It’s downright abrasive considering the lengths the game goes to establish
meaningful gulfs in cultural identity; Lara even levels up her ability to read
different languages by interacting with texts and murals in the environment. It
is easily the game’s greatest failure in my eye, because Rise of the Tomb
Raider succeeds in translating culture and history so well elsewhere, capturing
that which the Assassin’s Creed series does when at its best.

Multiplayer is a little different in Rise of the Tomb
Raider, unlike 2013 this game’s multiplayer isn’t competitive, actually you’ll
never meet another player; its leader board-driven, though there are more meaningful
interactions. Each level, or more precisely area in the campaign is scored and
they can be replayed to improve that score, or replayed as ‘Elite’, allowing
Lara to retain her skills and equipment, regardless of what she should have at
the time. There’s also score attack that introduces additional scoring systems
into the campaign, but more interesting is the Remnant Resistance mode, which
drops Lara into an open area with squads of enemies and a series of simple
objectives to complete. Remnant Resistance matches can be created by other players,
who decide their composition and thus the reward for completing them. Lara’s
gear, abilities, and match modifiers are determined by cards, unlocked through
packs using credits. Credits are earned by playing the game, including the
campaign, or of course by purchasing them with real money. I didn’t spend a lot
of time with these modes; they certainly add replayability, in an interesting
way in the case of the Remnant Resistance. Had I exhausted the open-world side
activities and explored all I could, then I may have played more, for what it’s
worth, I didn’t find the microtransactions particularly egregious.

As you well know from my incessant gushing and the embedded images, the game looks stunning in all counts, it succeeds on both a macro and
micro scale. The environmental construction is sublime; large environments are
visually astonishing, whether overlooking them from a vantage point, or picking
through the undergrowth at ground level.
But the small areas, the more linear paths that link the larger pieces
or the tombs, should not be overlooked either; they’re exciting for quite
different reasons. The dusty corridors of catacombs, the crumbling remains of a
Uranium mine, or quite simple a flooded section of cave; each is vivid in its
own way and equally flattered by the warm light of Lara’s glow sticks.

However, even the detail of the smaller environments is
large in construction, when I talk of the Rise of the Tomb Raider’s micro
details we have to look closer, at Lara and the other important characters.
TressFX, the humorous but nonetheless impressive technology that powered Lara’s
hair in the PC version of 2013 Tomb Raider is back, and quite literally bigger
than before. More striking is the animation detail of Lara, particularly her
face and the way it reacts organically to her words or expressions, so fine is
the fidelity that a smile really does reach all the way to her eyes. Even when
just traversing the environment there are small but distinctly human touches,
like wringing her ponytail after emerging from water, or the way she reacts to
the cold even when clad in appropriate weather gear.

Lara Croft is in practice the worst archaeologist; almost
every tomb she enters ends up exploding or rendered otherwise inaccessible, and
she actively trades ancient coins, valuable Byzantine finds, to expand her
murderous arsenal of weapons. But that actually doesn’t matter you see, because
she looks damn cool whatever she does. She’s not all that vulnerable this time
round, and I think the value of that development is only felt so strongly,
because of how 2013 Tomb Raider treated her. Moreover her past and motives are revealed
in a way that complements the evolving narrative, already imbued by the perpetually
unfolding audio log side stories.

Before playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, I
convinced myself that I wanted a story that would address the indisputable
physiological scarring inflicted by the first adventure. This game doesn’t do
that, yet I feel overwhelming positive about the new direction of Lara’s
portrayal. While she kills a lot more people, the action doesn’t feel at odds
with the narrative this time round; the game doesn’t try to sell Lara as
helpless, rather it acknowledges her lethal skills. Rise of the Tomb Raider’s flaws
are few in my mind, though they do cut quite deep in places, and the game
ultimately uses the gameplay systems of its predecessor. That said they are
excellent systems and are exploited to far greater effect by this game’s
mesmerising environments than they were previously.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a marvellous achievement. It
represents a meeting of the parts that made 2013 Tomb Raider so spectacular,
with sensations elicited by the series’ roots, and it’s helmed by a stronger, better
respected Lara than we’ve seen before.